Los Angeles is experiencing a few bumps on the left’s road to Utopia. Murders are up 12 percent, and shootings have jumped 20 percent.
The AP informs us that after a particularly exciting September weekend there were 19 shootings, and they weren’t all tea party members suddenly going rogue. Thirteen of the gunfights were gang related.
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck was described as being frustrated and protested, “This is not Dodge City.” No, if it was Dodge City, Marshall Wyatt Earp or Marshall Bat Masterson would be arresting miscreants or running them out of town.
Instead Beck lives in "Expert City" where the impractical disarm citizens and empower criminals.
Even as residents are treated to a hint of cordite in their cappuccino, the media assures us the increase of 26 murders compared to this point last year is peanuts when compared to the carnage during the Clinton administration: “Though the numbers are up, those cities are far safer than they were in the early 1990s during the crack cocaine epidemic. In Los Angeles, for example, murders peaked in 1992 at 1,092 people killed.”
Sure your death, to use Obama’s term, may be a personal “setback,” but think of the prisons that are being emptied on his watch.
Crime experts are uniformly unbiased in their opinion as to causes. Increases in crime and decreases in crime are equally baffling. It’s enough to make global warming research look scientific in comparison.
Charis Kubrin is a criminologist at the University of California and she’s of the opinion the cause could be one thing or on the other hand it could be another. She blames poverty and guns, but also has time to mention a new state law that decriminalizes crime and a “growing distrust of police.”
Capt. Jeff Bert, commanding officer of LAPD’s strategic planning group, must not get out of the office much because he says crime fighting needs more “relationships” and “police's ability to get out of their car and talk to people.”
The only problem being cops exiting the cruiser have to fight their way through a crowd of crime–arazzi video–taping their every move. Bert then does the bureaucrat shuffle and says regarding the steady increase in dangerous crime, “We can't arrest our way out of this." But I guarantee you law–abiding citizens would like to see him try.
Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan. He is president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation and chairman of the League of American Voters. Mike is an in-demand speaker with Premiere. Read more reports from Michael Reagan — Go Here Now.